Right to buy in England ‘fuelled housing crisis and cost taxpayers £200bn’
Common Wealth report calls discounted sales of council homes one of the ‘largest giveaways in UK history’
Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme has cost UK taxpayers almost £200bn, according to a report into the policy’s contribution to Britain’s housing crisis.
In its report into the sale of millions of council homes to their tenants at steep discounts since 1980, the Common Wealth thinktank said the policy had fuelled vast shortages in social housing and turbocharged inequality.
Describing it as one of the “largest giveaways in UK history”, it said the sale of 1.9m council homes in England had contributed to a situation where one in six private tenants in England now rents a former local authority home.
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Calculating the “opportunity cost” of the sales, Common Wealth said the former council homes were now worth an estimated £430bn after taking account of inflation and the surge in property prices since 1980.
Of this sum, the thinktank said £194bn represented the value that was effectively given away when the homes were sold at a discount. Between the years 1980-81 and 2023-24, the discount averaged 43% on the prevailing market price.
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See the original article at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/aug/03/right-to-buy-england-fuelled-housing-crisis-cost-taxpayers-common-weath-report